Lauren Fox

Articles by
Lauren

If Republican party bosses continue meeting to discuss how to derail Donald Trump at the convention, Trump won't be the only one to turn his back on the GOP. Now, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson says he'll leave too.

"If this was the beginning of the plan to subvert the will of the voters and replace them with the will of the political elite, I assure you Donald Trump will not be the only one leaving the party," Carson said in reference to a private dinner attended in Washington by 20 party officials including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and RNC Chairman Reince Priebus.

According to the report in the Washington Post, Republican leaders are preparing now for what to do if they get to the convention in July and Trump is still holding on to a major chunk of the primary vote, but has not become the clear nominee. The topic of the dinner was peculiar as Trump has been the clear frontrunner in the GOP primary for nearly five months.

"I pray that the report in the Post this morning was incorrect. If it is correct," Carson said. "If it is correct, every voter who is standing for change must know they are being betrayed. I won't stand for it," Carson said.

An intriguing report Thursday in the Washington Post revealed that top Republicans leaders huddled at a restaurant in D.C. Monday night to scope out what to do if the GOP convention next summer ended up being contested convention.

With Donald Trump the commanding frontrunner now for months, it wasn't immediately clear why party leaders would be anticipating that the convention would be contested or deadlocked or anything other than a coronation of the new nominee. The scenario being laid out was more of how the party establishment would stop Trump on the convention floor.

"Several longtime power brokers argued that if the controversial billionaire storms through the primaries, the party’s establishment must lay the groundwork for a floor fight, in which the GOP’s mainstream wing could coalesce around an alternative," the Post's Robert Costa writes.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations' office was evacuated Thursday after a "foreign substance" was found in the mail with a "hate message," a CAIR spokesman told TPM.
"There was a hate message. We cannot specify what it said. The FBI has asked us not to," the spokesman said.
An initial test of the substance was found to be negative, according to a report from BuzzFeed News and the roughly two dozen people evacuated at the Capitol Hill office have returned to the building.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA), who's previously made clear that he doesn't believe immigrants from the Middle East want to assimilate into American culture, wants Muslims who come to the U.S. to reject Sharia law. King made the comments when TPM asked him on Wednesday whether he supported Trump's proposed ban on Muslims entering the U.S.

King said he wasn't confident any immigrants from the Middle East would do so, citing what he said was the failure of the only two Muslim members of Congress to renounce Sharia.

Wendy Davis's gut told her not to support open-carry for hand guns on the 2014 gubernatorial campaign trail, but Texans love their firearms—so the Democrat supported it anyway.

In a revealing op-ed published Wednesday in Politico Magazine, Davis took readers inside the complicated politics of gun control for Democrats running in red states like Texas, where she reminded readers that "58 percent of voters in the state think gun restrictions should be either loosened or left alone."

There is a myth circulating in the beltway. The myth is that bombastic business mogul Donald Trump can be taken down if only a Republican donor were to write a big enough check, if only a fellow GOP contender were to attack him with a vengeance or if only someone, somewhere concocted the right campaign-combustion cocktail.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) are teaming up to push a new bill that would allow states to opt out of receiving refugees. Cruz is introducing the bill after Abbott's much-publicized efforts to block Syrian refugees from coming to Texas mostly failed.